Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles is calling on Catholics to remember the Mexican martyrs of the 1920s, writing this week that the persecution of their families who fled a century ago still shapes the Church today and remains a warning as Christians worldwide continue to face violence.

In a column published Sept. 14 by Angelus News, Archbishop Gomez pointed to a small but significant relic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels: a fragment of the tilma bearing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, believed to be the only such relic in the U.S. The history of the relic is closely linked to the persecution that took place in Mexico following the imposition of a law by President Plutarco Elías Calles in 1926. The law criminalized much of the Church’s public ministry, leading to the seizure and destruction of churches and convents, the killing of priests, and the imprisonment and murder of ordinary Catholics, including teenagers. The ensuing war between the government and believers is known as the Cristero War.

Archbishop Gomez’s predecessor, Archbishop John Cantwell, was given the relic of the tilma in 1941 by the archbishop of Mexico City in gratitude for sheltering thousands of Catholics who fled to Los Angeles during the years of persecution that followed the introduction of the Calles Law.

Archbishop Gomez cautioned that “we can never take our religious freedom for granted” and urged current generations to learn the stories of the era’s martyrs. Among those he named were: Blessed Miguel Pro, a Jesuit priest executed by firing squad with his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross while declaring “Viva Cristo Rey! (Long live Christ the King!)”; Blessed Salvador Huerta Gutiérrez, a father of 12 and auto mechanic who was tortured to learn the whereabouts of his two priest brothers, but he said nothing. The next day he was led with his brother Ezequiel to their execution at the local cemetery. He asked for a lighted candle, held it in front of his chest, and cried out: “Long live Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe! Shoot me so that I will die for God, because I love him”; The Servant of God María de la Luz Camacho, a 27-year-old catechist shot through the heart defending her church from anticlerical vandals; and St. José Sánchez del Río, a 14-year-old who was brutally tortured and killed after refusing to renounce his faith….

That history remains close to the surface for many Los Angeles Catholics. In April, relics of 36 martyrs from Mexico’s Cristero War toured the archdiocese, including a stop at the cathedral that drew hundreds.

Among them was Jorge Cardenas Magallanes, who said he learned only as an adult that St. Cristóbal Magallanes, a priest who opposed armed resistance and urged reconciliation before he was killed, was his great-great-uncle. Historian Jean Meyer, who has studied the era for decades, told the gathering that a long informal silence between the Church and the Mexican state kept the full history hidden from most Catholics for years, recalling that he was denied access to Church archives as a young researcher in 1965 out of what he now calls “prudence….”

From zeale.co